Ken Mudge

Ken Mudge, associate professor at Cornell University, has been involved in agroforestry research, teaching, and extension for over twenty years. His domestic and international research has focused on nontimber forest products including nitrogen-fixing trees, American ginseng, forest-cultivated mushrooms, and others. He teaches both on-campus and online courses in forest farming, plant propagation, and grafting. He is Director of the MacDaniels Nut Grove, which is the foremost center for forest-farming education in the country. Mudge was the principal investigator on a NE SARE-funded extension project in collaboration with the University of Vermont and Chatham University that trained forest owners in shiitake mushroom farming as a business enterprise, and has recently published the guidebook Best Management Practices for Log-Based Shiitake Cultivation in the Northeastern United States. He is the coordinator of the Northeast Forest Mushroom Growers Network (blogs.cornell.edu/mushrooms).

Ken's Books

An Integrated Permaculture Approach to Growing Food and Medicinals in Temperate Forests

To many people, forests are primarily reserved for timber and firewood harvesting. Farming the Woods invites a remarkably different perspective: that a healthy forest can be maintained while growing a wide range of food, medicinal, and other non-timber products. Farming the Woods covers in detail how to cultivate, harvest, and market high-value non-timber forest crops such as American ginseng, shiitake mushrooms, ramps (wild leeks), maple syrup, fruit and nut trees, ornamental ferns, and more. A must-read for farmers and gardeners interested in incorporating aspects of agroforestry, permaculture, forest gardening, and sustainable woodlot management into the concept of a whole-farm organism.